A Sibling's Tears
by SnowySilver
Summary: A one-shot concerning Souta’s reaction to the pain Kagome feels when she’s hurt, emotionally, by Inuyasha.


Title: A Sibling's Tears  
  
Author: SnowySilver  
  
Summary: A one-shot concerning Souta's reaction to the pain Kagome feels when she's hurt, emotionally, by Inuyasha.  
  
Disclaimer: Okay, raise your hand if you think I own Inuyasha! All right, now these nice doctors are going to help all of you who raised your hands into these jackets here - don't worry, I know they look weird, but they're the latest! - and you're gonna take a nice trip down to the looney bin! Have fun!  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
He felt so helpless.  
  
He hated that. Seriously, hated it. He hardly ever hated anything in his life, but feeling helpless brought out the most gut-wrenching hatred he'd ever felt.  
  
He could hear her, sobbing, right across the hall. Usually she was strong, so strong; today she wasn't. He wanted nothing more than to comfort her, to just ease her pain, just a little.  
  
Their mom was in her room, holding her, soothing her in that way moms do when things like this happen. He'd tried, a while ago, to hug her, to let her know he was there for her, but she had just started crying again.  
  
Okay, so maybe he couldn't comfort her. Maybe he should make it his job to avenge her. Teach that filthy good-for-nothing dog-eared coward a thing or two. It'd serve him right, it would.  
  
Oh, that thought was just hilarious. Short, little, sniveling, weakling Souta, taking down the infamous Inuyasha?  
  
Yeah right.  
  
Still, he wanted to. If there was one thing he believed in, it was family, and you never got away with hurting his family. NEVER.  
  
Of course, it'd be easier to prove that if he could actually do something about it, but he couldn't even comfort his own sister! He just sat there, sitting with his eyes shut tight and his arms wrapped around himself, cursing the name of the guy who'd hurt his big sis. It almost made him wish he knew more curses, just so he could insult that piece of trash more.  
  
Oh, if only he could just march back in time and really show the dumbell what it meant to be hurt. If only he could make his sister stop crying, because hearing her cry made him want to cry and he couldn't, because he wasn't a wuss and only girls and wusses cry and damn that Inuyasha! How dare he hurt her like that?!  
  
Outside, through the closed door, he heard the sobs die down. Relieved, he sighed, then felt guilty for the action. It was just that he was so angry, and so sad, and so scared for his sis that it gave him a headache, and he could almost pretend it wasn't happening if he couldn't hear it. That made him feel guilty too, though, because she couldn't pretend. She was stuck with the memory of... of whatever had happened, no one would tell him what... and she couldn't make believe it never happened, that he'd never broken her heart.  
  
His hatred for Inuyasha at that moment made him almost physically sick.  
  
He clenched his eyes tight as another round of sobs sounded, the hatred redoubling and making him wish he hadn't had so much for dinner. He felt cowardly, too, not being able to dredge up the courage even to go in there and hug her. All right, he admitted it, watching someone burst into tears when you hugged them kind of put you off hugging for a while, but he still felt like he should be in there for her. And yet all he could do was curse Inuyasha's name and call him the most imaginative bad names he could think of.  
  
So he did. He used more curse words than his mother realized he knew, and more than most of his friends had ever heard him use. After all, he wasn't really the swearing type.  
  
But this was a major exception.  
  
He listened to the sobbing for a moment, trying to catch her strangled words, though he knew it would just make him feel worse. He heard her saying how much she loved him, and why had he done that, and didn't he love her back? And that was too much for Souta, so he shivered and hugged himself all the tighter, blocking out all the noise around him.  
  
He remembered a time, not so long ago (though his ragged emotions told him it must have been years), when he'd called that scum his hero. He wondered how he could ever have felt that - how could anyone who hurt someone like that be a hero?  
  
He hated himself for thinking that about him. Also for being a weakling, and a coward, and a number of other things he considered himself right then that weren't to be repeated in polite circles.  
  
All this hatred, all these horrible nausea-like feelings that kept hurting his stomach, all the sorrow for his wonderful, strong sister - it was more than he could take. He sank down from the edge of his bed, hooking his arms around his knees and becoming as small as he could.  
  
Valiantly, he fought off the tears that threatened to overwhelm him, but in the end it was a losing battle.  
  
And so, his sister's cry of misery and anguish was lost to him in the storm of another's tears - his own.  
  
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*  
  
Written: 4/21/04  
  
Posted: 4/27/04  
  
A/N: This is pretty much a spur-of-the-moment fic, because I had to write something like this or I thought I'd burst. Trust me people, being the helpless little kid is NOT fun when you can't help you big sis. So, yeah...  
  
Well, what did you think of my little dive into my own feelings? Whatever you think, good or bad, I'd love to hear it! It'd seriously make my day. :D  
  
Once again, deepest gratitude to the wondrous CocaCola43, without whom I'd still have only one story up. 


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